


From Brumal Sleep

by rosekay



Category: Grimm (TV)
Genre: Angst, Episode Related, F/M, M/M, Multi, Mythology - Freeform, Non Consensual, Threesome - F/M/M, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-12
Updated: 2011-12-12
Packaged: 2017-10-27 05:51:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/292324
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosekay/pseuds/rosekay
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Slight AU of 1x06 (The Three Bad Wolves). Monroe runs a little wilder than expected with Angelina, and has to reconcile what he is to Nick and what Nick is to him. Fill for grimm_kink prompt: <i>The choices Monroe made in the episode have serious repercussions.</i> Please see warnings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	From Brumal Sleep

It was good to run, to let the iron flood his limbs again, feel loose enough to lope and scream and rut without worrying about how he appeared or what might turn up at this door. Monroe was not, by nature, a lonely creature, but his new brand of living had been isolating. It cut him off from the pleasure of blood, of running together, of indulging in the more ancient strains of his heritage. In an ordered house full of delicate woodwork and specialty brews, he didn’t indulge himself in the atavistic pull of the larger pack, the species, so his scent was not alone in the woods.

Angelina was the type of woman his grandfather have approved of _the better to breed strong pups, my boy_ , all pale, lean muscle, provoking hair. and an unerring eye for the joy of tearing something apart. She'd always been glad to flout even the most meaningless of human customs, relying on her striking looks, the way she cowed most men, creature or not, to carry her through. She took a simple joy in the hunt that was still heart-breakingly beautiful to watch, unselfconscious and brutally efficient. He remembered being younger, cocky and utterly out of control, desiring her from her cruel mouth to the creamy dip of her spine to her face and the richness of her deep growl in its true form. He remembered wanting nothing else in the whole world than to have her, to fuck her.

It had taken years of controlled exercise, music lessons, of increasingly fussy hobbies, and running his life like the clockwork he tinkered with, to temper an urge like that. All it took was Angelina's familiar grin, the way her spine curved gracefully into the firm swell of her ass when she looked back at him, to shatter it all. Then it was the wild scent of the wood, the slightly manicured scents of the park's proximity to human territory fading into the background because of the pleasure he chose to take. He felt like he could run for miles, leagues, whole countries ahead, looking for Angelina, bright hair streaming behind her, creamy shoulders dappled in moonlight, her scent up, the way she wanted him just as fiercely. She let him catch up, he could tell, but he didn't care, rolling her into the loam, careless, body beautifully loose with strength and cock a line of iron heat against her thigh.

She laughed when she threw him down in turn, nipping at his jaw eagerly, face shifted in the wild pleasure of it. When she paused, he pushed against her, eager. She took in his scent deeply, nose buried behind his ear, one hand tangled sharp-tipped in his hair.

"The Grimm--is it a long hunt?"

Monroe felt some of the red bleed from his vision, confusion surging like cold water.

"What?"

He couldn't imagine how Nick had anything to do with what they were doing now.

"He's soft," she said, teeth long in the moonlight, voice warm with intrigue, "prettier than I thought one of them would be. His scent is all _over_ you, Monroe. I always knew you had the long game in you." She sounded proud, a laugh brimming over her words. "Do you want to take him together like the old days? Bring him down quick?"

"Angeli--" he started, one hand up to grasp her shoulder, but she'd rarely let herself be interrupted at anything once she'd started.

"Or slow? Think he'd like that, Monroe, your little Grimm? If we took our time. We could even fuck him before the kill, blood him a little. Baby, you'd take him apart."

He couldn't help but imagine it, remembering the red that Nick had carelessly been wearing when he'd gone to pick Hap up at the station. His partner had been in an even more vivid shade, but it was the pale flash of Nick's neck that he'd been drawn to. The reflexive streak of fear that had gone through him that first night seemed like an alien memory, knowing Nick for the gawky newcomer he was, hanging on his advice and brazenly making himself at home in Monroe’s house, where he should have had his guard up. But now that his own blood was flush beneath his skin like a live wire, he could see it all too easily--how sweetly Nick's skin and flesh might part for his teeth, how he'd moan like a bitch if Monroe took him, Angelina holding him down.

Angelina--who was grinning, red and eager, up at him. Monroe had to dip his head, breathe her in deep to clear it of Nick.

"Don't talk about the Grimm while it's you and me, okay?"

She was happy enough with that, as he knew she'd be, and they wrestled pleasurably for rights, each accumulating the minor hurts of a moonlight rut, before she arched and went on her belly for him. He worried at her neck as she clawed at his back to hold him tighter, their bodies rippling truer in the darkness. It was good to run.

*

The look in Nick's eyes after Hap was almost unbearable. Worse though, was the way he was ready to throw Angelina to the, well, wolves, pigs, cops, just fill in the blank, thak you. He needed, Monroe thought gravely, a new life. It was one of the more frustrating things about the Grimm, the way he seemed to think that being what he was just meant extra special night vision and a distant calling. Nick didn't get it, the way he, the way all of them, threaded through the mundane world like roots in seemingly untouched earth. They couldn't afford to break with family. The most timid of creatures still knew the call of blood, the necessity of honoring ties to stay safe. It was the kind of thinking that would get him killed sooner rather than later. A freshly minted Grimm without the weight of Marie Kessler's ice-cold reputation to offset the kind of danger that same reputation might bring down on his head and not even the good sense to rely on his instincts.

The double blow of Angelina's betrayed accusations, when the scent of their run still clung to them both, and Nick bursting in with his own tirade made him want to grind his true teeth blunt. It took him too long to clean up Hap's blood, and the smell of it was still all over the floor, though he'd spent another few hours painstakingly cleaning up everything he'd torn apart. There had been a savage joy in letting go, and a quieter one in mindlessly putting all the delicate clockwork back together. Some of it had been beyond even the skills he'd acquired in his life on the straight-and-narrow. Somewhere, someone was probably having a chuckle at how laughably easy it had been for the scent of a pretty girl he'd loved once to turn him back to the old days like no time had passed at all, like he hadn't been building his house of cards for years and praying he wouldn't blow it down himself.

"I'm staying out of it," he'd told Nick bluntly, and he had meant it, but it was going to take more than sawing at the cello to siphon out the rage bubbling beneath the surface, the incipient sense of loss. _Which would have made you sadder?_ Nick didn't get it, but that didn't make him wrong. For all her fierce protective instinct, it was Angelina's wild streak that had left Hap undefended, Angelina's and Monroe's own weakness. The ache burned in his chest, insistent, when he looked back the photos. Hap had always been the forgiving sort, too good-natured to hold a grudge for long, or to see anything coming for him. _He didn’t deserve to die like this_. Just the kind of nice guy to get a sister riled up at the prospect of a threat. All the times Monroe had resented his mess or his irresponsibility suddenly seemed cruel. The smashed photo frame at the door, and lingering, mingled scent that still hung in the air, that was nothing less than a provocation, even if a bittersweet one. Angelina had never done anything halfway.

He lay awake in his sweater and jeans, eyes wide open, and eventually fell into a discomfited sleep without even remembering the moment he slipped over.

Monroe was running in the woods again, Angelina cruel and beautiful and swift at his side, but they had more exciting quarry than rabbit ahead of them, the moon bright and heavy, nothing to stop them from clinging to every instinct that might show itself. He was in that perfect blissful state between his true form and the affectations of his human persona, blood-drunk and so powerful he could have killed for hours and still hungered for more. When Angelina grinned at him, tossing her head back to shake back auburn hair that ran like water through the wind, her smile was already red and sharp.

The figure that coursed ahead of them was male but shorter than he was, in dark jeans that disappeared into the shadows and a carmine shirt that set both of their eyes burning, mouths thick with want. He could smell the myriad little cuts and bites the forest had already taken of the prey as he ran desperately ahead, the distance between them waning. It was Angelina who got the first hit, tumbling the prey into the dirt with a graceful leap. She rolled him onto his back, nothing gentle about the way she just batted at him or the light in her eyes, and he smelled like more than just dinner, smelled like victory, ancient vengeance.

Nick's eyes were wide and almost colorless in the moonlight, lashes heavy when he blinked the sweat away. He looked like someone his more literary ancestors might have written about themselves, black hair tousled by his run, white skin peeping out from the collar of a vivid red shirt that marked him well. Angelina growled, making short work of it with little precision, so Nick's shoulders and torso were scored with the kisses of her claws, everything all tense and pale as he struggled not to shake before them.

"Monroe," he pleaded, a familiar voice, deep enough and resonant even in the unquiet night, but Monroe was in no mood to hear it. He circled around, one deep sniff at Nick's white throat that heaved with his fear, and one clawed hand in the soft, dark mess of his hair, forcing it back so Angelina could surge in, marking him with something more bite than kiss. Nick gasped, and the air became fragrant with fresh blood, redolent of Nick's particular scent, all sharp and thrilling. Monroe felt his face itching, eyes hot, and knew that Nick was looking at nothing that seemed human as he tried to scrabble backwards. Any progress was immediately arrested by Angelina pinning his arms and another warning nip on one shoulder. Monroe couldn't resist licking that one, tasting both of them in a slow, hot stroke that had Nick throwing his head back, the air so thick with fear he could feeling himself trembling to have more of the scent.

Monroe made quick work of the jeans as Angelina tasted the soft mouth as if to assure herself of an enemy's weakness, her sharp fingers holding Nick's jaw still so he couldn't turn away, digging into the soft pit of his cheek. She even nuzzled him a little, pleased that they were working in such beautiful concert, called by blood to do work that was necessary but not lacking in pleasure, on an old enemy who was still young and soft, who still bled freely at the first prick. She shoved the struggling figure onto his belly in the dirt, bending to lick and bite at the graceful column of his spine, landing another warning bite that streaked crimson until he froze, only his breath moving his body unwilling. She continued until she wet the soft join of his thighs, tongue moving up to kiss another mouth that had Nick jerking helplessly in the dirt, bitter arousal flooding the air so that Angelina laughed bright and lovely into the night, pale shoulders shaking.

"He's ready," she hissed, excited, into Monroe’s mouth, giving him the prey's earthy scent, and he had been ready since he watched them tangle. He surged ahead, dropping a casual bite at the pale nape, watching the shudder that stilled Nick's body, listening for the thunder of his heart beating in terror. He curled his fingers around Nick's jaw as Angelina had, following her steps, tightened them until it brought the prey's head off the ground, forced his spine into a beautiful arch. He could smell the blood beneath the skin, the bruises surely to follow. His cock needed no encouragement, nudging bluntly at a hole that smelled of Angelina now too until he assured himself of a good position, body arched over Nick's. He pushed his way to the root, wild, swallowing Nick's moan with a mouth over his, hips rutting as fast as the animal wanted, no human gentleness to stop him. Angelina had one clawed hand over the vulnerable spot low on his spine, giving him just the right frisson of anxiety to be as savage as he needed to be, driving him forward into the soft, human body, tight and full of fear, familiarity slipping away like water. It was a ride that felt like a good hunt, uncomplicated and satiating.

When he was finished, tied still despite the fact that it was no bitch he had fucked, Angelina gave him a suggestive lick up the side of his jaw, lips curling wide. Shall we? it said. Her brows were heavy with the wild hunger. Monroe licked his lips, his eyes on the soft, beating pulse of the human, the Grimm, defeated in the dirt, taken in every way. She lunged forward at his side, lethally quick as always with her fangs sharp in the dim light. She tore at Nick’s throat with a swift jerk of her head, until it smiled at them, ghastly and pulsing, the ground carmine where he’d been breathing just a moment ago.

*

Monroe forced himself to focus on the boring ceiling pattern as his heart calmed down, true features receding back into softer human ones. His jeans were uncomfortable with the cooling evidence of what he'd spent. The sheets twisted in his fist had been shredded. Outside the window, the forest waited, the night still dark, lit only by the moon, bright and heavy in the sky.

In the shower, he almost expected the water to be running red in the drain. He couldn’t help the way he reacted to the memory of the dream, and took care of his arousal quickly and clinically, not exactly sure where to even direct all the shame. He spent the day making his house scrupulously clean, not a knickknack out of place. When he found himself scrubbing the same spot in the sink for the fourth time, the metal so scratched up with the steel wool pad that it had taken on a different tint, he sighed, feeling his eyes reddening with frustration. Hap was _gone_ , and so was Angelina in her own way, and here he was, dreaming of--

He barely remembered to grab his keys before heading out.

*

Nick had a nice, normal-looking place that Monroe could not imagine Marie Kessler inhabiting, not enough instruments of death probably. He circled on the porch a few times before working up the courage to knock, fighting the urge to piss all over the Grimm’s front yard, which was something he couldn’t even <i>begin</i> to address.

When the door finally opened, he had a heart-stopping moment when he thought that Angelina had somehow returned, fulfilled the fruit of that terrible dream, but of course, he was just being foolish. The scent was all wrong, even the features, only that hair, the same vivid banner that had been so beguiling on his ex. She had Nick’s scent all over her _his scent’s all_ over _you, Angelina had said_. This was the girlfriend. He could feel his face flush with the shame of it, something possessive bristling just beneath his skin, a moonlit memory.

“I, uh, is Nick here?”

She looked a little surprised, and Monroe realized for the first time how early it was, barely dawn. Nick’s girl was already dressed to go though.

“Sure, well, he’s asleep. Are you from the department? Is everything okay? Is it Hank?”

“Look, I’m sorry,” and he was, for being _insane_ after having his past shoved in his face, “it’s really urgent.”

That drew her brows together, not unkindly and sympathetic. “Sure, just wait a minute, will you? I’ve just got an operation to get to.” She paused at the door, clearly unsure as to whether or not she should just let a stranger into her home at his word. Monroe took pity.

“I’ll wait here,” he said quickly, watching the relief cross her face.

Nick was apparently not a heavy sleeper, because she was mostly true to her word, reappearing just moments later. He heard their voices coming around the corner before the door opened again.

“--couldn’t have sprung up overnight,” Juliette was saying, fingers hovering over Nick’s face. When her fingers dropped, so did Monroe’s stomach.

Nick had pale skin that bruised easily. Monroe had already given him plenty of crap about looking like a battered wife after Grimm cases gone awry. He’d noticed the mark high on Nick’s forehead after his first meeting with Angelina. He’d come out of this one otherwise untouched. Blutbaden didn’t forget these things, aware of how wounds and healthy bodies smelled if the person in question was someone that drew even a little bit more than a cursory interest.

Yet something had happened since Monroe had last seen him, a series of darkening bruises in a radial pattern, a few especially dark in the soft pit of his cheek, and slightly fainter ones high on his cheekbone and along the sharp line of his jaw. Like he’d run into the world’s most uneven door, or if someone had grasped his face, and held a little too hard, someone with big hands and long fingers. The struggle to not look down at his own hand, clenched hard against his side, was harder than he thought.

“Think about staying home, okay?” Juliette gave Nick a quick, brushed kiss on the cheek and a friendly nod to Monroe before moving past him.

The sun was slightly higher in the sky now, the watery gray light nothing like penumbra of the woods at night, but he was half afraid that if he looked Nic in the eye, he’d only see what had happened in the dream. The dream which stood in his mind as vividly as it had when he’d first awoken, every scent from its detail embedded into his consciousness. The dream that had apparently left a mark in the waking world.

When he finally looked up, he realized that Nic was avoiding his gaze too, one hand sheepishly at the nape of his neck.

“Come in,” he said finally, turning. He was dressed in a comfortable looking Henley and sweatpants that left little to the imagination. Monroe resolutely kept his eyes above the waistline. Nick busied himself with an ancient-looking coffee maker that looked like it had seen better days, maybe at some point before the Revolutionary War. They stood in awkward silence as it sputtered and hissed what smelled like generic _Folgers_ into the burnt carafe. Monroe could have cried, but he took gamely swallowing down the horrible brew as part of what was karmically due for having an insane blood-dream where you hurt your sometimes-ally in the worst way. The memory of it still stirred fresh in his mind, so that his fingers tightened and rippled a little with fur on the mug.

“I’m sorry,” he said, just to get it out of the way. “About the thing with Hap. I shouldn’t have--”

“No,” Nick allowed, and the blood was hot in his cheeks, making the hand print bruise more livid still. “I shouldn’t have yelled. There are things...that I don’t understand yet.”

It sounded like a confession, or an allowance at least.

“Angelina just,” Monroe began, and Nick flushed even more than that, his knuckles white around his own mug, and oh, this was bad, this had already gone wrong so quickly. “She’s traditional,” he finished lamely.

The silence that followed was mostly unbearable, the clink of his spoon in the coffee mug like the echo of a bell.

“Monroe,” said Nick, leaning forward. The lack of the usual leather jacket collar gave Monroe a view of the rather spectacular bite mark on the nape of his neck. He’d recognize the pattern of his own fangs anywhere. He almost dropped the coffee in shock. “Did you have a--dream last night?”

He almost broke the mug, his stomach clenching. Nick sounded young and a little lost. There was heat in his cheeks and between his legs. He smelled like anxiety, but, and Monroe was pathetically grateful, not fear. He wanted nothing more than to run out the door with his tail between his legs, but he was past that--he had control now.

“In the woods?” he asked, anxiety ratcheting up like a screw.

Nick nodded, looking down at his cooling coffee. He’d barely had a sip. “I don’t really remember what happened, but--” he looked up suddenly, eyes clear _the Grimm’s eyes had been wide and almost colorless when they caught him._ Monroe almost missed his next words in the force of the relief that washed over him. _I don’t remember._

“What is this? A Blutbaden thing? What can you tell me?”

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “I’ve never--uh, with, a human. Not like _that._ Your--” he gestured stupidly at the bruises on Nick’s face, the bite on his neck. “You didn’t do anything--?”

“No,” said Nick. “I came home, and I went straight to bed.”

“I don’t know, Nick. I’ve never heard of this before, but, I mean, it was just a dream, okay?” And I want to make your house part of my territory now. _Let’s never talk about it again?_

Nick looked at him expectantly, for an apology, an explanation?

Monroe faltered. “It’s not--” _Which one would make you sadder_?

“I’m sorry I dragged you into this.” Nick sounded unusually serious, a little defeated. “I don’t know what I’m doing. I don’t _get_ these, you--”

“It’s nothing,” said Monroe. This thing--this _must_ be some Grimm thing. Had it been the choice? Had he made it without even realizing it? It hurt, almost physically, to see Nick diminished and unsure. “Look, I just came to say sorry about Hap. It was my responsibility.”

“And you always back up your own, right?”

The veiled accusation was barely veiled at all, Nick’s eyes a little hollow, maybe because of the time. He and Angelina were closer to each other than they thought, each thinking they could do anything, fiercely grappling for control. He remembered how frustrating Nick’s smirks had been, each as much of a challenge as Angelina’s burning eyes over the rim of the liquor bottle, a taunt to do more, to do _better_. Monroe was used to being lonely--even the false light of Angelina’s fire had been enough to draw him back in. Nick, he realized, was new to the cage that was being a Grimm. _Monroe_ had never thought about the burden, the fact that Marie Kessler had died as a woman elderly for her kind. Whatever the dream had been, a claim carried over, some thread of Grimm lore tightening like a screw with with the violent joining of Blutbaden, it was a bond nevertheless, some old, primal part of Monroe that wanted Nick for his own.

Was it losing control, he wondered, or wresting it back for himself, to ally himself irrevocably with a Grimm, to follow a fever dream to a road he’d be bound to keep?

He leaned forward, was pleased to see that Nick didn’t flinch _he’d trembled in the dirt_ , his scent nervous but not panicked. Maybe this was what he’d thought Angelina was, someone to hold heart and head and blood as tightly as a fist, the urge to take like a punch that drove him forward. Monroe had never exactly entertained notions of settling down with a litter of pups, especially after he’d broken with his kind, chosen the clean route. But this, this was the kind of fire under the skin that made creatures follow instinct over sense, branded them as legitimate prey for good Grimms through the pages of ordinary children’s stories. The run was in his heart, beating to get out.

Nick looked up at him when Monroe’s fingers brushed the underside of his chin, gently tilting his head up, no need to leave any mark now, though the eerie echoes of the dream were warm beneath his fingertips. There was not, and would never be, submission in the gray eyes that were his inheritance from Marie, cold and lovely in her youth, Marie, who had blithely cut and burned limbs and lives to make a point.

“Hey, I’m backing _you_ up, okay?”

He could see Nick relaxing, shoulders falling a little, mouth softening into something that might have been a smile. Whatever had been buzzing in his head since Angelina had lit him up again was restful at last. Restful in the home of a man who had his own girl with gentle hands and provoking hair, who’d been born to kill him, and whom he’d been born to kill. He would, Monroe decided, let those cards fall as they would.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the poem that opens _Call of the Wild_ , in reference to feral instincts hidden in the sleep of winter. Thanks for the comments on the earlier parts over at grimm_kink. Hope everyone enjoyed the conclusion.


End file.
